With his whole philosophical, philosophically-scientific and scientific activity Petronijević, in the line with earlier empirical and critical metaphisicists, such as Lotze, Herbart, Hartmann, Volkelt, he directly contributed and made possible the formation of modern sphere of cognition which is today known as Metascience.
Professor Herbart had many highly talented students, who combined a variety of philological and pedagogic interests characteristic for the "Neuhumanisten" (New Humanists), including Ernst Karl Friedrich Wunderlich, Georg Ludolf Dissen, Friedrich Thiersch and Friedrich Kohlrauschan.
This and the introduction to his Lehrbuch signaled the two great stages in tile progress of psychology the negation of innate ideas by John Locke, and of faculties, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, by Herbart.
It is first mentioned by Henricus a Gunterrodt in his De veriis principiis artis dimicatoriae of 1579, where he reports it to have been acquired (looted) by a friend of his, one Johannes Herbart of Würzburg when serving in the force of Albert Alcibiades, Margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach in the campaigns of 1552/3.
The following year, he published his Philosophy essay entitled Einiges Philosophische in gemeinfasslicher Form („Philosophical Considerations for Everybody's Understanding”) in Berlin, obviously under the influence of Herbart's and Feuerbach's ideas.